Elliott, Geoffrey Bryce
Geoffrey Bryce Elliott is the founder of Elliott Family Portraits. Noted for his high consumption of coffee and intensely scholarly bent, he is a student of medieval English languages and literatures, particularly Arthurian legends. He reads voraciously anything he could get hold of, although he is particularly fond of works by and about Isaac Asimov, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, Robin Hobb, John Donne, and Mark Twain, in addition to those to which his medieval scholarship leads him. An argumentative man, he will happily wrangle with others about minutiae he can recall thanks to a nearly eidetic memory, often to the frustration of those same others. Given to fits of melancholy and melodrama, he will often wallow in self-pity for hours or days, and he is prone to agitation. Even so, he is intensely loyal to his friends and unflinchinlgy generous with those close to him. Too, he is devoted to his work as a teacher and researcher, giving much time to learning, developing new knowledge, and teaching it to others. Early Life Geoffrey Bryce Elliott was born 4 November 1982, in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Kevin Jay Elliott and Deena Kay (Bryant) Elliott. Not long after the death of Geoffrey's maternal grandfather, James Hickman Bryant, and the birth of his brother, Daniel James Elliott, the family relocated to Kerrville, Texas. There, Geoffrey attended public school in the Kerrville Independent School District, during which time he participates in academic competitions and the school district's band programs; he excelled in the academic competitions throughout primary and secondary school, and he received the Louis Armstrong Award for his contributions to the district's band programs (he was publicly credited by Kerrville Independent School District head band director Robert Whipkey for regenerating the district's jazz band program after it had been dormant for several years. Undergraduate Activities Following his graduation from Kerrville Tivy High School in May 2000, Geoffrey began studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in August 2000. He initially majored in music, but changed his major field to English in 2002; he retained a minor in music when he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, in May 2005. He also sought and received certification to teach English language arts and reading to middle- and high-school students in Texas, which extended through November 2010. Geoffrey fairly distinguished himself throughout his undergraduate studies, during which time he was emplyed first by Super S Foods, where he had worked since high school as a cashier and cash office clerk, then by Pizza Hut franchises as a cook and delivery driver. He was an active member of the UTSA Honors Program, which became the Honors College during his term of study. Through the Honors Program/College, he was awarded a four-year Presidential Honors Scholarship (2000-2004), a one-year Great Conversation Scholarship (2004-2005), a research and travel grant (2004), and the Honors Thesis Prize in two consecutive semesters (2004-2005). In addition, Geoffrey received the Clara Nelson Freshour Scholarship (2000-2002), the Sjoerd Steunebrink Scholarship (2003), and several Texas Excellence Grants (2002-2005). Geoffrey was also a member of the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honors Society's Beta Omega Chapter (2003-2005), serving as its secretary (2004) and securing formal recognition of it--noted by office space and keyed access to vrious rooms--in the UTSA Department of English. In addiiton, he was a member of several other honor societies: the Alpha Chi National College Honor Society, the Golden Key International Honour Society, and the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society, all of which inducted him in 2003. Further, he was named to the 2003 Who's Who among Students at American Colleges and Universities and the 2004 National Dean's List. Graduate Studies Geoffrey enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL) in August 2005, pursuing a Master of Arts degree in English literary studies with a focus in the medieval period. After completing the required coursework, exams, and a thesis (Manifestations of English Arthurian Legend in the Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies of Robin Hobb"), he was awarded the degree in May 2007. Afterwards, he transitioned into doctoral studies in the same field and at the same intsitution. Throughout his graduate studies, he maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average and distinguished himself no less than he had as an undergraduate. He remained active in the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society, transferring his membership to the Lambda Zeta chapter (2005-2009) and serving as both its corresponding secretary (2006-2007) and its president (2005-2006). He was also engaged in the annual conference hosted by the UL Department of English (2005-2008), chairing and serving on its abstracts committee (2005-2008) and serving on its hospitality and technical committees (2005-2006). In addition, he served as a tutor in the Department of English writing center (2005-2006), presented a workshop for the department's first-year writing program (2008), and was a contributor to and organizer of the department's weekly poetry reading series (2008-2009). His coursework and departmental service were accompanied by a significant amount of teaching. Geoffrey presided over classrooms of developmental composition, first-semester freshman composition, second-semester freshman composition, an early British literature survey, an early American literature survey, a survey of novels and short fiction in fantasy literature, the first-offered section of a poetry survey, and a course of advanced exposition. In addition, Geoffrey taught at a local primary school extended learning program and offered a number of guest lectures, including one in a graudate-level seminar. A graduate teaching assitantship (2005-2009) compelled much of his teaching, but it was not the only award Geoffrey received. He was repeatedly awarded research and travel grants from the UL Graduate Student Organization. He also received the Florence Jones Award for Outstanding Graudate Student in English in 2009, partly as a result of his having passed his doctoral comprehensive exams with distinction earlier that year. Geoffrey was admitted to doctoral candidacy in the spring of 2009, following his completion of required coursework and comprehensive exams in medieval English literature, early modern English literature, early American literature, and fantasy literature. He immediately began work on his dissertation, The Esatblishment of Malory's ''Le Morte d'Arthur as the Standard Text of English-Language Arthuriana'', which originated in a seminar paper written for a class in seventeenth-century studies. The prospectus for the disseration was accepted by a faculty committee cosisting of Professors Christopher A. Healy, Jennifer Vaught, Elizabeth Bobo, and Yung-Hsing Wu in early 2010. Defense of the dissertation is scheduled for the spring of 2012. Marriage and Religion It was duing graduate school that Geoffrey met the woman who would become his wife, Sonya Priscilla (Jaramillo) Elliott. A departmental function brought the two together, but they began truly to get to know one another as Sonya tended Geoffrey while he had mononucleosis during his first semester of graduate school and as the two took a course in Beowulf. The two dated through the following years, even after Sonya moved to the American Northeast to continue her own studies. Geoffrey proposed to her on Wednesday, 23 April 2008, and on Saturday, 9 January 2010, the two were married in a ceremony at the Fredericksburg United Methodist Church in Fredericksburg, Texas. The ceremony featured an homage to their shared experience in the Beowulf class; their wedding vows, as well as the rendition of the Lord's Prayer recited during the ceremony, were in Old English, and the groom's cake at the reception displayed the first eleven lines of the poem. Rev. Jason Fry presided over the ceremony; Bill Smallwood served as Master of Ceremonies at the reception; the best man was Geoffrey's brother, Daniel James Elliott; his groomsman was Michael Joseph Berntsen; his ushers were David Dean Rynearson and Jaime Jaramillo. Preparation for the wedding awakened in Geoffrey a desire to pursue religion. Rev. Fry had informed Geoffrey and Sonya that they were required to undergo pre-marital counseling before he would perform their wedding ceremony, and so Geoffrey, feeling it would be inapproprate to ask a preacher for counseling when he was not a member of the church, decided to find a new church home. He had been raised as a Methodist by his parents, but they had at that time not been regular church-goers for some twenty years. After trying a church in Brooklyn, New York, Geoffrey and Sonya went to the United Methodist Church of the Village in New York City. They soon became members of the church and did their pre-marital counseling with the head pastor, Bishop Alfred Johnson. At the bishop's urging, Geoffrey took on several service roles in the church, becoming an active member much to his own surprise and that of those who had known him as markedly skeptic earlier in life. Of particular note was his repeated performance as King Herod in the church's annual Christmas pageant. In New York Following the completion of his comprehensive exams in 2009, Geoffrey moved to Brooklyn, New York, to live with his then-fiancé, Sonya. Shortly after doing so, he began to work as an adjunct instructor at Technical Career Institutes, a two-year technical college in New York City. For four semesters, he was assigned to teach remedial and developmental English classes. Shortly before the fall 2010 semester, he was promoted to a full-time position at the same institution, and his teaching repertoire expanded to include speech and a newly created remedial course. In the spring 2011 semester, he was asked to participate in a pilot program to test out lecture-capture software the institution was testing; the request prompted him to develop a teaching website in an attempt to engage with multimedia technologies in his classrooms. That term, he was also asked to draft a syllabus for an ethics and technology course, which was accepted with minor revision. In the summer 2011 term, Geoffrey was assigned a remedial English course, a first-semester freshman composition course, and sections of technical writing and speech; the assignments were repeated in the following term. In addition, he gave guest lectures to English as a second language courses at the institution and received research and travel grants from it. Research and Writing By the end of 2011, Geoffrey had completed a fair amount of research and research-related travel. In addition to his undergraduate and master's theses and the in-progress doctoral dissertation, he had presented eleven papers at academic conferences such as the South Central Modern Language Association conference and the International Congress on Medieval Studies. He had also had two academic articles published: "Shades of Steel-Gray: The Nuanced Warrior-Hero in the Farseer Trilogy" (Studies in Fantasy Literature ''4 2006: 70-78) and [http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/vexp20/67/4 "Melville's ''Moby-Dick"] (The Explicator 67.4 2009: 252-54). In addition, he maintains the weblogs Ravings with a Dash of Lucid Prose and Geoffrey B. Elliott's Teaching Blog, both of which contain learned and other writings. A series of journals, Thoughts from the Edge of Somnolence, also proceed from his pen, and relfect his engagement not just with his teaching and research, but with his other activities. Other Activities Geoffrey long studied a number of Japanese martial arts: classical jiujutsu, Kodokan judo, and aikikai aikido. His study began as a response to childhood bullying. After suffering cracked ribs on a field trip, Geoffrey was enrolled in classical jiujutsu classes taught by a professional associate of his mother's, Morris Arredondo. Until he graduated from high school, Geoffrey studied intermittently. While his work as a music major prevented him from pursuing martial arts study, Geoffrey was able to resume it after switching his major to English. At that time, he took advantage of the fact that UTSA boasted an aikido club, sponsored by Dr. James Clark. Geoffrey studied with Dr. Clark for a year and a half, serving as both vice-president and president of the club and aiding Dr. Clark in presenting self-defense seminars for UTSA. Student teaching obliged Geoffrey to leave off active club membership, and the move to pursue graduate studies at UL ended his term with Dr. Clark. At UL, however, Geoffrey found that the tuition waiver that accompanied his graduate teaching assistantship would cover non-major coursework, including judo classes offered by the school. He enrolled in judo classes at UL and studied until he moved to Brooklyn, rising to the rank of yonkyu. During that time, he competed in the Louisiana State Judo Open twice (2007 and 2009) and served as a referee and techncal official for one year (2009). Upon moving to Brooklyn, Geoffrey resumed his study of aikido at the eminent New York Aikikai. The dojo, affiliated with the founding Hombu Dojo in Japan, was administered at the time by Yoshimitsu Yamada and Seiichi Sugano, both hachidan and both former uchi deshi of aikido O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba. In March 2010, Geoffrey successfully tested for the rank of gokyu and has continued to study intermittently since. Geoffrey was also heavily engaged in role-playing games. His undergraduate honors thesis centered on them, and an exerpt from that thesis was the writing sample he sent along with his graduate school applications. It was informed by his long term playing Alderac Entertainment Group's Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game, during which he was able to exert some direct influence on the game's official storyline.